The primary function of a brassiere is to enhance the wearer's comfort by providing support for the breasts. It can also enhance women's cleavage and their breasts' perceived shape. Presently, bras are mostly having wires on cups to help the cups fit close to body and conform the breast root, to create a nice profile of breast, and to give maximum push up effect. The wire is usually made of rigid metal or plastic. However, one disadvantage of the wired bra is irritation to wearer after long hours, sometimes the ends of the wire make poke the breasts causing reddish and uncomfortable. Particularly, the wire can create pressure to the wearers' armpit or cleavage between the breasts and tendency to dig into the breast tissues, causing irritation and leaving red marks. In some serious cases, the sharp end of the wire could penetrate through the fabric material and scratch the skin and possibly physical injuries. In order to prevent this problem from happening, a dense wire channel is usually used to cover the wire.
There are also non-wired varieties of brassiere in the market for users who do not like wired brassieres. While not causing irritation to the breasts, the unwired brassiere cannot uplift the cleavage like a wire bra does when it is not stiff enough or it cannot conforms the curvature of the breasts and can be very uncomfortable to the wearer when it is stiff enough for the uplifting or shaping effects.
International Application No. PCT/US03/18595 disclosed an anti-roll support for brassieres. It is 2D-shaped plastic sheet material which, according to the specification, has sufficient stiffness to provide desired lifting or holding support while readily conforms to various body curvatures for increased wearing comfort. However, this support is required to adhere directly to the fabric comprising the body-shaping garment using a film or hot melt adhesive. Because it is 2-D sheet material and is forced to conform the 3-D shaped garment fabric by an adhesive, there is a residual torque in the combined layered materials (i.e., the garment fabric layer and the plastic support layer bended to conform the shaped garment parts by an adhesive). Perhaps, this residue torque exerted by the plastic support of certain stiffness makes it undesirable to have a single integral piece of support for shaping both wearer's breasts (“a brassiere comprising a single shaped-support for supporting both breasts may be less comfortable than a brassiere comprising independent supports, and is therefore not preferred”, see lines 18-21, page 7).
In view of the prior art, there is need for a better design of unwired brassieres.